The Lion and The Snake
by tresemellon
Summary: They were the pioneers; the ones who were going to pave the path for those following them. One shot.


**A/N This is written for the Eurovision challenge. My prompt was pioneer. Of course it's Draco/Ginny, do you really expect anything else from me ;) I hope you enjoy**

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"We're the pioneers of this situation, you know," she whispered, her words muffled slightly as she spoke into his neck.

"What do you mean?" he replied. He tightened his arm around her waist, and readjusted the duvet cover that was getting further and further away from him by the second. "And can you please learn to share the bloody bed sheets, woman."

She playfully tugged them back as she plastered the smirk across her face that the gentleman in her company had taught her to do. Not so much taught. She just had a knack of 'borrowing' other people's quirks. "Well, we're the first to dive into this situation. Have you ever heard of it before? A lion and a snake getting on so well?"

Draco raised his free arm. "Red, I think this is a little bit more than getting on well."

"Yeah, you're right, I hate you."

The head nuzzled in his neck made it almost impossible for him to get a proper look at her face. Sometimes she said things in such a way that it was very difficult to tell whether she was being serious, or whether she was messing, or whether she was trying to get a rise out of him. It frustrated him to no end. "Maybe I hate you too. Maybe I'm pity-fucking you because nobody else will do it instead of me."

This statement was enough to push Ginny over the edge. She had never been good at controlling her emotions, and that moment was a prime example of just that. She lifted her head up and felt an anger bubbling in her mind, and a swelling of heartfelt sobs in her throat. But she wasn't going to cry, not over that. Her love life was a very touchy subject at that moment, especially after the very public breakdown of the famous Potter-Weasley romance. She was surprised she could even let another guy close to her personal bubble so soon after the affairs

It was, what appeared to be, a fairytale relationship. But behind closed doors it was anything but. It wasn't anything personal, they just fell out of love. That was what Ginny liked to tell herself to distract herself from the fact that Harry found it so easy to dump her and move on to somebody else. She wasn't friendly with the girl. She knew that she was a Ravenclaw and she had brown hair, but that was the extent of her knowledge of her. She didn't really want to know anything about her so she never asked anybody. She felt like it would only hurt more to know things about her; she'd just end up comparing herself all of the time, and that wouldn't be healthy in the slightest. She found the easiest thing to do was to just cease any and all contact from that moment onward. And that was the exact thing she had been doing for three months.

Ginny got out of the bed and started picking her belongings off of the ground. "Right, well, I'll be going then."

Draco became confused. "Wait, what? Where are you going?"

"Oh, go do one, Malfoy."

He got out of the bed and grabbed her arm to prevent her from leaving, seemingly forgetting how bare he was as his manhood hung on display for everybody to see. "I don't understand."

"You can just go and fool around with every girl in the school for all I care. At least you don't have any feelings to worry about. You're the most heartless person I know." She felt incredibly angry, so much so that she just wanted to cause damage to something. She knew however, in in her rage, that breaking the items in the Head Boy dormitory probably wasn't the greatest idea in the world, so she restrained herself.

"I could do that, Red. You and I both know that that is a very plausible thing for me to do," he smirked, "but is it the thing that I want to do? I don't think so. I only do what I want, and I always get what I want. You know that."

She snarled at him. "You're such a pig." She tugged her robes back on after realising that coming out of Draco's dorm at this time stark naked probably wouldn't be the greatest way of attracting no attention to herself. Sure, it slowed down her leaving, and sure, the dramatics were significantly less impressive, but she just wanted to be out of there and be able to get on with her day in peace.

"Ginevra," he whispered. This caught her attention. It wasn't every day that Draco Malfoy called her by her name, let alone her full one. She stopped what she was doing for a moment to lock eyes with the tall boy.

"Yes?" She bit her lip slightly. For some reason she used lip biting less as a seductive facial gesture, and more as physical evidence of her being nervous or uncomfortable.

Draco hated apologies. And apologising. And being the good guy. He much preferred to be able to just go through his day without really caring about whether or not the things he said or did was going to badly affect somebody. If he smoked that would have been about the perfect opportunity for him to light a cigarette, inhale the toxins, and blow away the pressure. He was sure that muggle inventions were better at relieving stress than any wizard stuff. "Look, I shouldn't have said that. Seriously. It was wrong of me to do so."

Ginny scoffed at him. "Yeah, right."

Draco felt his temperature rising. "How hard is it for you to just accept a damn apology! You know how difficult this sort of thing is for me, so why are you making it even harder?"

"I don't know," she said, sarcasm dripping off of every syllable she muttered, "maybe it's because I'm in a vulnerable position because I'm developing feelings for an absolute idiot and I just feel like my whole life is falling apart. And do I even need to mention the fact that you just said that you're pity-fucking me?"

"Christ, Weasley, it's a joke. Why are you allowed to make jokes at my expense but I'm not allowed to do the same?"

For once, Ginny Weasley was silent. She didn't know how to respond to that. It was true what he was saying. She held Draco to different standards than she the ones that she held herself to.

"Look, Red. I care about you. At the start did I? I'll be honest, I only wanted a way to get at Potter. Get under his skin. But then I got to know you, and it completely changed me. I absolutely hate myself for liking you. I can't stand it. This isn't the way it's supposed to be; we're not even supposed to mingle. This isn't right."

Ginny laughed a little bit and reached up to the blond, wrapping a lock of his hair that seemed like it was trying to escape back behind his ear. Her mood instantly changed. She went from wanting to beat him to kiss him. She didn't want to admit to anybody, but she really had begun to feel completely enamoured with the Slytherin.

"I care about you too, Draco," she whispered. The thoughts had been running around her head for a while but it was only then that the thoughts escaped her mouth and were released into the open, vulnerability enveloping her. Sure she had said she had developed feelings for the boy previously, but the quietness between them at that moment made it feel more intimate than the screaming before.

"We'll work out all the kinks and things," Draco said, pulling her into a warm embrace, "and besides, as you said before, we're the pioneers of this situation."


End file.
